when was amos t akerman attorney general

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Who appointed Akerman as the Attorney General of Georgia?

President Ulysses Grant appointed Akerman federal district attorney for Georgia in 1869 and in June 1870 named him U.S. attorney general. The appointment was a surprise to everyone, including Akerman.

Who was Akerman married to?

He practiced first in Clarkesville, then in Elberton. In 1864 he married Martha Rebecca Galloway, with whom he had eight children, one of whom died.

Where did Akerman teach?

After graduating Phi Beta Kappa from Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, in 1842, he went south to teach, first in North Carolina, then in Richmond County, Georgia. In 1846 Akerman accepted a position as tutor in the Savannah home of John Macpherson Berrien, U.S. senator and former attorney general. As he taught the Berrien children, ...

What were the issues that Akerman faced?

One of the biggest issues Akerman faced was that of federal land subsidies to railroad companies constructing lines in the West. Akerman’s ruling that the railroads’ commitments had to be fulfilled before the land could be granted earned him the enmity of the railroad “robber barons.”

What did Akerman do during the Civil War?

During the Civil War (1861-65) Akerman supported the Confederacy and enlisted in a home-guard unit. He joined the Republican Party after the war (he had not been politically active before) and served on the state convention that drew up the Constitution of 1868, with its guarantees of equal political rights for African Americans. That autumn, over Akerman’s protests, the white majority in the state legislature expelled twenty-eight duly elected Black members.

What did Akerman believe about the Constitution?

Constitution, which by then, through the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, recognized that Blacks and whites had the same civil and political rights.

Early years

Akerman was born on February 23, 1821 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire as the ninth of Benjamin Akerman’s twelve children. He attended Phillips Exeter Academy high school, and then attended Dartmouth College located in Hanover, graduating as a member of the class of 1842 with Phi Beta Kappa honors.

Headmaster, farmer, and law practice

Upon graduation, Akerman moved south and got a job as a headmaster instructor of a boy’s academy in Murfreesboro, North Carolina, at that time part of Richmond county. Akerman was known as a strict teacher. In 1846, Akerman was hired as a tutor for John M. Berrien 's, children in Savannah, Georgia.

Civil War

Although he was against secession as a solution to the North-South conflicts, Akerman stayed loyal to his adopted state and joined the Confederate States Army in the spring of 1864.

Reconstruction

Akerman joined the Republican Party in the campaign for black-American citizenship and suffrage, and was an outspoken proponent of Reconstruction as a member of Georgia's 1868 state constitutional convention and as U.S. district attorney for Georgia (1869).

U.S. Presidential election 1868

During the 1868 Presidential election there was concern that Akerman supported presidential candidate Horatio Seymour over Grant. To stop the rumor, in a letter from Elberton, Akerman published his full endorsement for Ulysses S. Grant and would serve as the Republican presidential state elector from Georgia.

U.S. Attorney Georgia 1869

In 1869 President Grant appointed Akerman as U.S. Attorney in Georgia. President Grant, initially, attempted to protect African American voters by the use of State courts.

U.S. Attorney General

On June 23, 1870, he was appointed as Attorney General by President Ulysses S. Grant.